


A Merging of Practices

by FavorsTheFoolish



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Courtship, F/M, Wedding, borderlandsreversebang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 15:55:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14060361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FavorsTheFoolish/pseuds/FavorsTheFoolish
Summary: Pandora's most reliable medical professional takes a shine to Pandora's most eccentric genius, and proceeds to attempt to win her heart. (For the Borderlands Reverse Bang 2018 swap, artwork by Tumblr's Ladytalon1)





	A Merging of Practices

[ ](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/midnightatnoon/18445508/35916/35916_original.png)

 

_ Roses are red _

_ Bile is yellow _

_ Tannis I’d sure _

_ Like to be your fellow. _

“What on earth does that mean?” Doctor Tannis muttered, holding the document, written on the back of what appeared to be an ancient prescription for pills intended to treat erectile dysfunction or altitude sickness, at arm’s length.  Someone had slid it under her door before dawn. “It doesn’t even specify a topic or a journal in which this person intends to publish. This smacks of liberal artistry and I won’t have it.”

Quickly, she dashed off a reply:

“Not looking for research fellows at this time”

on a bit of canvas, leftover from when one of the locals had mysteriously exploded, and pinned it to the outside of her door. 

That should take care of that. 

Later that night, Zed retrieved the fabric note and frowned.

Okay, so… he might have to get a little more specific. 

***

“This is, hands down, the worst idea you’ve ever had, Zed Blanco,” Moxxi said as Zed sipped a whiskey while brainstorming gift ideas.

“I did not come here for your sass, I came here for your reputation as Sanctuary’s numero uno expert on all things seduction,” Zed replied. Moxxi groaned, topped off his drink, and thought.

“Well. Maybe demonstrate that you care about her interests?” she suggested.  “She’s a career woman, show her you’d be supportive?”

Zed pondered.

***

“Hello! Yes, you! You there. Are you interested in participating in a research project? It’ll give your pathetic existence slouching towards your inevitable death some actual significance, depending on the outcome, and humans required far fewer of their so-called ‘vital’ organs than one might-- Excuse me! How dare you! Well… fine! Go do your own spinal tap!  I beg your pardon, miss, are you-- good fictitious god, what is  _ wrong _ with your companion? Is it malnourished?  Oh,  _ that’s  _ a child.  It’s disgusting.  Please take it away from here.  I seriously doubt that getting it a frozen dairy product with improve the state of the… discharge it seems to be oozing. You, however, are more than welcome to participate in--” 

It was a damn shame, listening to that little woman try to coax the local liabilities into participating in research. It had been a hell of a lot easier on Pandora, when they could just walk out of Sanctuary and find a nice bandit camp and nab all the subjects they needed. Now that the city was floating, it was a little more difficult. You had to fast travel down to the surface, and really, you were only likely to get one test subject at a time. Try to grab more than one and they’d come to while you were securing the first, or the skags would get ‘em.

Just like that, Moxxi’s advice hit him. He was going to show Tannis that her secret admirer would be the most supportive supporter to ever help find a control group. 

Thus, it was Zed’s pleasure and privilege to FastTravel down, grab a couple psychos, and haul them on back up to Sanctuary, wrapped in a bow, and quietly (well, as quietly as a man could drop about three hundred and fifty pounds of squirmy nutjob) them by the Crimson Raiders’ door, knock, and run away to hide in the alley.

He heard the door creak open.

“Oh,  _ excellent! _ ” she crowed. “Excellent, excellent, excellent…”

She didn’t seem to have much trouble dragging them inside, continuing to chant ‘excellent’ in a soft sing-song until the door slammed shut again.

***

“Still the worst idea you’ve ever had,” Moxxi sighed, wiping down the bar as he treated himself to a victory whiskey. “Is it sex? You’re certainly good looking enough, I’ll take you in the back and give you an oil change right now.”

“Aw, c’mon Mox, you ain’t that cynical!” he argued, grinning, too pleased as punch to allow her to bring down his mood. 

“I’m a true romantic, sugar,” she answered, “but that woman is so far out of her mind that it might as well be on Elpis.”

Zed looked around the bar and quirked a smile.

“You got your type, I got mine,” Zed said. 

***

For his next trick, Zed came by the Crimson Raider’s HQ once the screaming from the psychos had died down, this time with a bag of Eridium to leave along with some a bouquet of flowers from one of the ice caves. He just had to hope that Tannis found it before they turned into a pile of weirdly wilted slag petals.  

He’d just set the Eridium against the door, glowing purple, and the flowers, glowing pale blue, when both fell back to illuminate her boots. 

“Despite my reputation for misunderstanding the insipid social mores in which Pandorans regularly engage,” she said, staring down at Zed with a very serious expression which did not seem charmed in the slightest, “I assure you, I was not born yesterday. I am an extremely busy genius, so kindly take your motives out of the ulterior and  _ state them. _ ”

Zed blinked. Tannis rolled her eyes and sighed.

“Dear non-existent deity of questionable benevolence.  What. Do. You. Want?”

Zed got to his feet, brushing the dust off his knees.

“Look,” he replied, steeling himself for whatever her facial expression might portend, “I happen to think you’re a mighty fine looking individual, and I read your journal Echoes on the effects of Eridium on the molecular composition of mucus, and damned if I ain’t wholly smitten.”

This time, Tannis blinked. Zed plowed forward.

“So what I’m asking, Doctor Tannis, is if you might consider tryin’ out being a couple?”

Tannis blinked again, a faint trail of saliva oozing from the corner of her lips.

“I see,” she said, wiping her rapidly moistening chin on her sleeve. “Excuse me.”

At which point she shut the door in his face.

***

“I’m sorry, but it’s for the best, Zed,” Moxxi tried to soothe him as he tried to crawl into his third bottle of whiskey, this one laced with formaldehyde. “She has feelings, but they’re a bit of a mystery to her as well.”

Zed groaned, slightly alarmed as the familiar smell of embalming fluids on his own breath hit his nose, but not so alarmed that he wasn’t going to keep drinking.

“Just… Moxxi, I like the way that brain works, I mean, damn, and she’s just so little and cute and the way she doesn’t look  _ at  _ you but… you know, like somewhere about two feet behind your head, it really works for me. I just figured, she’s a woman of science, she’s a practical gal, probably wouldn’t mind some practical gifts, and… shoot, just got caught a little sooner than I meant to.”

He snuffled, curling his hand around his tumbler forlornly. 

“These are really good, what is it?”

Moxxi smiled sweetly. 

“It’s one of the house cocktails, sugar, I call it a Saints Preserve Us. Another?”

“Make it a double,” he answered, head rolling to the side. His cheek sort of stuck to the varnish of the bartop, separated a bit by stubble, as he tried to drown his heartbreak.  “

It was quite late when Moxxi eighty-sixed him (that woman did not ever seem to sleep). Zed trudged through the dust, trying not to wake anyone by drunkenly crashing into the barrels and crates that seemed to line nearly every exterior wall. 

He managed to unlock the door to his clinic and push it shut, and even make it the few feet to a cot before his legs gave out. He pulled the scratchy blanket, covered in some terrifying fluids, around himself, and dozed off. 

***

His head  _ shrieked  _ as he woke abruptly, hitting the floor as he flailed off the mattress, dragging himself to a corner and emptying his stomach in a bucket over a discarded spleen, gasping for breath and trying to get back to his feet.

“Hold still. I require your undivided attention, and your heaving, while a perfectly rational reaction to unexpected social interaction with which I can wholly sympathize, is inhibiting my already three-wheeled train of thought.”

Dang, but he adored that voice, even when it was taking a buzzaxe to his skull, didn’t think he could like it any better, but then she said:

“On three: One, one, one, one, one…”

Somewhere in there, she stabbed him in the neck with a health vial, and he let out a relieved, quasi-orgasmic moan.

“One, one- Oh, I do have that effect on people. I’ve decided that the prospect of sex with you is intriguing, so kindly take off your clothes and get on the table,” Tannis ordered, removing her jacket and pulling off her boots. 

Somewhere between the moment that she pulled her goggles off the top of her head and put them on her face, and the most mind-blowing, excruciating, anatomy-defying orgasm he’d ever had, he went from thoroughly twitterpated to head over heels, and he said:

“Marry me, Doctor T,” and meant it.  

“I’ve never been married,” she mused, putting back on her boots and her jacket, but only picking up the rest.  “Very well, make arrangements.”

And she walked out the door.  

***

“Well, now  _ this  _ is the worst idea you’ve ever had,” Moxxi shook her head at Zed as she went over catering with him. 

“No, I mean it, there can’t be any music,” Zed said into his Echo to a DJ who was having a lot of trouble understanding the idea that he’d be playing the static left by cosmic radiation from the birth of the universe itself mixed with the screams of an ancient dial-up modem. “Not just music with words,  _ any.  _ The bride will not have it, and if she won’t have it, it ain’t gonna be happening!  And heaven help you if I hear a damn bass drop, kid.” 

Zed hung up, heaving a long sigh, then turning his attention back to the other papers strewn around the bartop.

“Did you get the alterations on my suit done?” he asked.  Moxxi rolled her eyes.

“Scooter took care of it,” she said. “Though I have to say, the fact that you’re wearing something so vastly different from your reanimated brother is just… odd.”

“Look, he’s already a zombie,” Zed answered, “and he won’t shave that damn mustache. If we wore matching suits, well… Tannis has peculiar tastes. What if she really likes zombies? Or mustaches?”

Moxxi held up her hands in surrender.  Zed nodded firmly and went back to consulting the catering list.

“Dammit, Moxx, what did I say about bacon?!”

***

“It’s a little morbid, isn’t it?” Lilith asked. 

“Well of course,” Tannis replied, carefully trimming her white lace lab coat with upholstery remnants from the late, brave ceiling chair, Phillipe. Clork was already dressed in the matching fabric, so she had also made some corsages from the same for Lilith and her Echo Recorder of Honor. 

After sitting in silence for a long time, Lilith got up, walked up the stairs and opened the safe.  

“Tannis?” she asked. Tannis looked up, and a brief glance at Lilith’s face showed that her lacrimal glands were functioning correctly. Tannis glanced down at the object in Lilith’s hands. 

“I know it doesn’t match the upholstery, or the bridesmaid’s lab coat, but would you mind if I wore this?” 

Tannis looked at Roland’s beret, and the looked back up into Lilith’s eyes for as long as she could stand.

“I don’t mind,” Tannis answered.  There was a word for this, she knew it, one of those things it was appropriate to say when one of the closest things one had to a friend held a hat that she intended to wear despite its inappropriateness to the occasion because she still loved its deceased former wearer, and not just for his impressive pectoral muscles (as far as Tannis knew). There was a reassuring platitude Tannis was supposed to convey, and at last, it came to her.  

“I think it would be… I think it would be ‘nice.’”

***

“Big day,” Ned said, carefully spraying himself with odor-killing formaldehyde cologne that made Zed’s stomach lurch at the memory of his Saints Preserve Us hangover.  Sidling up to the mirror, Ned curled the tips of his mustache with mortician’s wax.

“Sure is,” Zed answered, muscling his brother out of the way so he could check out his own appearance. His upholstery fabric tuxedo was stiff, and he had no doubt he’d be sweaty as a Hyperion intern on evaluation day by the time the ceremony was over. “I hope she likes the suit.”

He stole a bit of Ned’s wax to tame a few flyaway hairs, hardly recognizing his own face without his surgical mask, clean shaven, nose hairs trimmed.  Final touches in place, he walked beside his brother to the waiting loaderbot to which one of the Vault Hunters had uploaded a basic ceremony protocol. She’d also put a bishop’s hat about as tall as she was on it and then laughed her ass off for an hour. 

The DJ cued the static and dial-up shrieks. Lilith was the first up the aisle, awkwardly holding Tannis’ echo recorder.  Tannis herself was next, pushing Clork, who had been temporarily fitted with little wheels for the occasion. She scooted him up beside Lilith, and once he was adjusted to her satisfaction asked:

“So! Hello! Greetings. How does this work? I’ve seen broadcasts, but very few of them seemed to have much relevant or applicable information to this situation, and many seemed to involve the revelation that a previous spouse thought to be dead was in fact not, choosing the moment at which the plebians are asked if they object to the union to make themselves known.”

The loaderbot cleared its non-existent throat. 

“I will ask questions regarding the state of this particular interaction. You will answer them. The answers are not legally binding. I will ask Zed the same set of questions. His answers will also not be legally binding. I will then ask if you wish to be legally bound. That answer is legally binding. If both answers are affirmative, then you will be legally bound. For this to be dissolved, I would require the lawyerbot protocols with the most recently established Sanctuary statutes. Do you wish to proceed? This answer is not legally binding, but any answer besides the affirmative will prevent any follow-up questions.”

“Indeed, yes, let’s be quick about it.  I have several things that need to come out of the centrifuge, and several sexual toys I plan to use this evening that need a trip through the autoclave,” Tannis said, cheerfully oblivious to Lilith’s facepalm or Zed’s blush. “Then they need to cool, of course. One never uses these things fresh out of the autoclave, not without a great deal of prior planning or information to extract.”

“Very well. Doctor Patricia Tannis. Have you come to acceptable terms with Zed Blanco regarding the nature of this relationship by which you agree to abide in a non-legally binding capacity until such time as all vital signs have ceased or until a lawyerbot is available to dissolve the union?”

Tannis nodded brightly.

“Yes. Yes. Yes. Everything has been thoroughly, as they say, ‘hashed out.’ Hash is disgusting. I’m glad that it’s out of the equation.”

“Doctor Zed Blanco. Have you come to acceptable terms with Patricia Tannis regarding the nature of this relationship by which you agree to abide in a non-legally binding capacity until such time as all vital signs have ceased or until a lawyerbot is available to dissolve the union?”

Zed grinned like a big old sap and stared at pocket of Tannis’ labcoat. 

“You bet your bolts I do,” he answered.

“Excellent. Legally binding mode engaged: Agreement to the marriage protocol will necessitate entanglement of finances and decisions regarding care for the other party should said other party become incapacitated. Cohabitation recommended, but not required. Doctor Patricia Tannis, do you agree to the terms of the marriage protocol?” the loaderbot asked, swiveling its torso slightly in her direction. “Please respond in the affirmative with ‘I do’ if applicable.”

“I. Do,” she said carefully, then nodded firmly.  The loaderbot swivelled towards Zed.

“Doctor Zed Blanco, do you agree to the terms of the marriage protocol? Please respond in the affirmative with ‘I do’ if applicable.”

“She’s the only one who gets to punch my organ donor card,” Zed answered.

“Repeat: Please respond in the affirmative with ‘I do’ if applicable,” the loaderbot said, with a faint tone of mechanical irritation.

“I do, sheesh,” Zed said.

“Marriage protocol engaged.  Printing.”

From some slot somewhere in the robot’s torso, a marriage certificate emerged as it was printed within.

“Well! That was easy!” Tannis said, taking her Echo from Lilith and placing it on Clork’s seat.  “I was told that there would be food, is that accurate? I would like to eat, make the most cursory of social remarks to the people who’ve chosen to attend, and then return to the lab to check on the centrifuge and autoclave the instruments I plan to use on you during intercourse this evening.”

“Sure thing, Patty-Cakes, whatever you want,” Zed replied, following dutifully as she pushed Clork back up the aisle.

“Excuse me, what did we discuss?” Tannis said sharply. Zed chuckled, slightly chagrined. 

“Oh course, my mistake.  _ Doctor _ Patty-Cakes.”

“Thank you. I did not go through as many rounds of thesis defense as I did to be referred to without a proper title before a nickname.” 

Still standing at head of the aisle, by the loaderbot, Lilith stared.

“Wait, that’s it?” she asked. The loaderbot raised its hands, its shoulders incapable of shrugging. 

“I am not sure what you expected to occur, but yes,” it replied. “Please take the marriage certificate.”

Lilith took the paper and sighed. The loaderbot rose, the movement dislodging its hat, and returned to the Vault Hunter who had reprogrammed it.  She followed, determined to get some of the food before Zed’s zombie brother got his undead hands all over it. 

__  
  
  
  


 

 


End file.
